Project Proposal
on
Low Cost Sanitary Napkin
delivery service
(An initiative to improve health status of the adolescent girls and
women and generate livelihood avenues in rural areas)
Submitted by: Vishal
Ashraf
Arshiya Mehta
Saloni Kasana
Akshit Garg
Mehak Arora
Executive Summary:
Women’s health and hygiene has been one of the key concerns over the years across the world.
The awareness on menstrual hygiene and usage of sanitary napkins is virtually absent in rural
areas. Poor menstrual hygiene can cause fungal infections, repeated infections to RTI, cervical
cancer and vulnerable to infertility. Reproductive hygiene education and sexual education is
not part of any education system in India.
The adolescent girls get information and education on menstruation from her mother and
grandmother, who themselves had practiced the unhygienic behaviors for years and thus do not
see any harm in the practices of using old cloths during menstruation. By creating enough
awareness regarding menstrual hygiene's importance and use of sanitary napkins, we try to
prevent such chronic diseases from happening in the rural areas.
The project intends to build an enterprise model on a pilot basis in the working areas where
group(s) of women would be fostered to run the business by themselves with handholding
support and overall supervision by the implementing organization i.e. Gramya Sansthan for
due course of time. Since the idea is in its inception phase, we would want to see and plan
growth as the inception phase and pilot phase materializes. And to ensure that a smooth delivery
of these products take place whenever needed by women. This will require to develop an
application accessible to all the women.
In view of generating demand and creating awareness among the targeted beneficiaries i.e.
adolescent girls and women on the importance of personal hygiene and menstrual hygiene
management in the marginalized communities, the project would involve many actors such as
community based organizations (called CBOs) such as adolescent girls group, women’s
group, Self Help Groups (SHGs) formed by the organization in previous time under several
project’s interventions over the years. So that awareness is generated in both rural and urban
areas . We will partner with all the convenient stores and then provide with the required service.
Another important aspect of the project is to develop the adolescent girls and women as
entrepreneurs while taping their potentials and imparting training for their skill diversification
and becoming self-sufficient as part of the social enterprise of the low cost sanitary napkin
business and our responsibility to the society as whole.
And a service like this will also help generating employment in all the areas and easy
accessibility of the products required by women in case of emergencies.
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Management Team
Arshiya Mehta – CEO
Saloni Kasana- CMO
Vishal- CFO
Ashraf -COO
Mehak Arora -Director
Akshit garg - Director
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Project Background:
Article 25 of International declaration of Human rights states that everyone has the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family; including
food, clothing, and housing and medical care and necessary social services motherhood and
childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. In India nearly 80% to 90% rural women
use old cloths instead of using sanitary napkins leading to vaginal infection& diseases. And
almost 60% of the women don’t have access to these things
Low cost Feminine hygiene is a priority. Menstruation continues to be shrouded in
misconceptions and perceived as a matter of extreme embarrassment. In Uttar Pradesh, as in
other parts of India, menstruation and menstrual practices are clouded by taboos and social
restrictions for women as well the girls. The socio cultural norms in the society discourage
discussion pertaining to puberty and menstruation within and outside the family thus leading
to poor and unhygienic practices to manage Menstruation. Girls have little opportunity to take
care of their health and other requirements. On account of the traditional patriarchy followed
since time immemorial, often their contribution is not accounted and valued. Communication
gap between girls and their parents, other family members is found.
The problems rises in proportion to the affordability to the choices of means adopted for
menstrual hygiene management where sanitary napkin is preferred by and large by thewomen
and girls but due to low income and poverty they many times fail to afford it. This further
inculcates sense of inferiority and declines their confidence in mobility attending schools,
doing even daily household chores and participation.
Though in urban India the trend has changed in recent years, but in working area alike rural
India, these topics remained significantly taboo among all, irrespective of social and economic
status. Poor Accessibility and Social barrier is the root cause behind this. Sanitary Napkins are
only available in the medical stores or departmental stores generally situated in the largest
villages or local markets. Without transportation, it is very difficult to reach the marketplace.
On top of that, social issues prevent women and girls from obtaining sanitary napkins at local
pharmacies due to social embarrassment about the topic.
Thus, this project not only would be responsive to meet the need of low cost sanitary napkin
demand of the poor and marginalized community’s women & girls but also would set-up and
run a business model that would further support in engaging some of the girls and women for
their employability and earning income and empowering them. Since, without availing
effective alternatives to the girls and women on menstruation, they will not be motivated and
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changed towards new behavioral practices. Hence, we will make sure production, promotion
and uses of the low cost sanitary napkins by the target beneficiaries itself. Also this will lead
to more and more support for the service because of the growing awareness amongst everyone
today.
Application
WINGS4HER application will be the main source of sales. All booking will be done through
WINGS4Her app. The reason to do so is because it will be easier to keep track of services and
it will be convenient for clients to make booking through application. Another reason to do so
is that anyone with an internet connection can make a booking. Thus it will be easier to reach
a larger number of people in comparison to offline selling.
Market Overview
Our idea is very new to the market as there is no one such platform catering to all the hygenic
needs of a woman and hence, it is possible for us to grab a first mover advantage. Also, with
an increase in the need of such products we can grab this opportunity to enhance the needs of
this niche market.
Market Entry Strategies
The entry strategy will highly depend on the definition of potential customers in that market
and whether those are ready to get value from your potential offering. It all starts by developing
your smallest viable market.
Sometimes whether to start from a niche or micro niche is a matter of understanding how
competitive and saturated is an existing market. The market we are catering to is a niche market
and there is a lot of untapped potential in the market. We have the first mover advantage in
catering to this segment. We will mainly enter this market virtually. Our application will
provide the basis of our existence. We will enter the market independently. We would have a
virtual presence which would help us to cut our physical costs.
Our initial focus will be on advertising and making the people in the market aware of our
presence. Such an online approach would help us generate traffic faster . Our approach will be
of an independent organization working with the framework of the economy. While entering
new markets as well we will approach the markets independently without the support of any
other organization.We might come to some agreements with other companies but our approach
will be independent.
Short Term Marketing Plan
WINGS4HER marketing plan for the first 6 months will be to attract new customers and gain
trust of the clients as well as the professionals and freelancers. We plan to achieve this through
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various tools. · Paid social media advertisements
· WINGS4HER application
· Instagram page for WINGS4HER
· Collaborating with micro-influencers
· Collaborating with pharmacies and suvidha centres (personal selling)
· Word of mouth promotions
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
We want women to conveniently order the products from the application even if they are stuck
in traffic so that they may get delivery by our effective and efficient system under max 20
minutes as we’ll be setting the centers every 5kms .So that they can order and products can be
picked up easily and delivered.
Situation Analysis:
The working area i.e. Delhi Ncr . The area is geographical challenging to work where frequent
transportation is not available for the movement in the villages. The adolescent girls get
information regarding the menstruation from her mother and grandmother, who themselves
had practiced the unhygienic behaviors for years and thus do not see any harm in the practices
of using old cloths during menstruation leading to the lack of accessibility of these products.
The families of the intervene communities are extremely poor and illiterate and daily wages
work is the only source for majority of the families that also varies due to seasonality of the
jobs in construction, agri- cultural labour works, MNREGA and others. Some of the families
also work at brick kilns. Few of them are marginal farmers in the villages but it’s not
sufficient for food grainproduction for whole year.
Another important factor is that the rural women and girls generally do not maintain cleanliness
during menstruation period. As a result they become the host of many infectious diseases. This
is due to the lack of awareness among them and also due to the economic inability for adopting
better precautions like- use of good sanitary napkins during menstruation period. Usually
different varieties of sanitary napkins are found available in the market. But the reason is that
these napkins are not affordable for rural poor women and girls.
Gramya Sansthan conducted Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with girls and women in 15
villages including 2 blocks i.e. Sevapuri and Baragaon of Varanasi district and 12 villages
including 2 blocks i.e. Naugarh and Shahabganj of Chandauli district in Uttar Pradesh. Total
225 nos. of girls and women participated in the FGDs. The motto behind the FGD was to know
about sanitary napkins use during menstruation also called MC. During the discussion with the
girls and women participants said they need sanitary napkins because cotton clothsin their
families are not available enough to make it use of as absorbent during MC. And more than
half of the women were not aware of this as they weren’t able to buy the sanitary napkin as it
wasn’t able in their areas.
In Naugarh block, adolescent girls told that mostly they use tericot cloth as no other option is
available. They further added that if they purchase sanitary napkin from the market the
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minimum price of a pad cost Rs. 22/- and in a month at least 2 to 3 pads are required. So, it’s
not possible to purchase it per month for a girl of poor or very low income family. ‘Kishori
Suraksha Yojna’ is launched by the Govt. and provision is made to provide free sanitary napkin
to the adolescent girls enrolled in the govt. schools, but it is not reaching to them and if
distributed in somewhere just one packet that is insufficient to them.
[
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In FGD the women participants expressed their views that why Govt. provides free sanitary
napkins to girls only and not to women also because we equally have the need of sanitary
napkins during MC. They agreed on that if anyone provides low cost sanitary napkins as
compare to the market price they would like to purchase it. They also added that it would also
be good if there could be such facilities for the proper disposal of used cloths (absorbent) and
sanitary napkins.
Working area:
The working is located in Delhi Ncr in India. There are3 identified blocks listed in the below
table for the interventions of the proposed project. Another fact is that the identified blocks
blocks in the district, people migrates to the local city namely Delhi in search of job and return
back to their place. Only few percent of the people migrates to metropolitan cities.
Area
Delhi Ncr
Block
Gram Panchayats
Faridabad
43
Gaziabad
73
Noida
63
Source: Secondary data by the Govt. department
Demographic data of Delhi Ncr
Description
Urban
Rural
Population (%)
87.58 %
12.42 %
Total Population
11,710,20
3
2242,55
3
Male Population
8890,630
1927,27
5
Female Population
4819,573
2115,27
8
920
906
Average Literacy Rate
70.72%
76.75%
Male Literacy
81.55%
82.89%
Female Literacy
58.95%
69.98%
Sex Ratio
Age Wise Data
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Total 10-19 Years persons
400632
59436
10-19 Year Female
186774
28188
Total 20-35 Years age persons
417014
65596
20-35 Year age Female
201499
31138
Total 36-45 Year age Persons
185608
28107
36-45 Year age Female
89890
13766
Source: Census 2011
In the above table we find that a large proportion of the district population 1710203 nos. figures
87.58% of Ncr reside in rural areas in comparison to urban population that is just 242553
(12.42%) out of total as per census data 2011. In age wise data, too, we find that in rural areas
10-19 age group adolescent girls are 186774 nos. (approx. 11%) and 20-35years age women
are 417014 (24%). In age group of 36-45 years 89890 that figures 5% inthe total population
of rural areas. It shows that there is good scope of work under the project.
The project would be started to pilot in three identified blocks said before and gradually would
be scale up in other blocks as per the feasibility and success of the initiative.
Project target:

Adolescent girls (10-19 age group)

Women (20-45 age group)
Methodology:
a) Demand analysis: For promoting low cost sanitary napkins in the villages and more
importantly amid the poor and marginalized community girls and women, it would
require to conduct a demand analysis by sample survey mode. This would further help
in designing marketing strategy, increasing demand and reaching to the desired
population by the time.
b) Quality assurance of the product: Another important aspect for promoting low cost
sanitary napkin is to make sure the quality of the sanitary napkins in relation to the
available brands in the market. However, it’s impractical to meet the same quality at
the starting stage but efforts would be made to provide good quality cost efficient
sanitary napkins to the girls & women.
c) Empowering the CBOs and Women’s Groups: For this, participation of the project’s
personal would be ensured in the schedule monthly meetings of respective CBOs and
women’s group and their larger collectives formed at block and district level to reach
our maximum audience at a time. Importance of the adopting hygienic practices
through low cost sanitary napkin and other positive behaviors would be focused during
the discussion.
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d) Involving multi-stakeholders in promoting feminine hygiene: Support from the
multi-stakeholders to enable appropriate atmosphere to talk, demand and receive
services on menstrual hygiene issues is crucial. Now a days, govt. service providers
like ASHA, ANMs, AWWs are assigned task to visits, provide right information on
MHM but in practicality its rarely found in the villages and comes into the notice when
health status of a girls and women reaches at a critical stage. Hence, it is envisages that
involving multi-stakeholders (parents, school teaches, service providers, community
leaders, group leaders etc.) would be an added advantage.
e) Information dissemination: This would be done through various ways like taking
support from the community volunteers, peer leaders of the group in the local
communities.
f) Engagement with the Government: Regular dialogue with the government
department like Health, Education and Panchayati Raj departments, discussion would
be held to scale up the business by negotiating for providing opportunities of linking
the women entrepreneurs in the govt. initiative for supply of the low cost sanitary
napkins in local areas and region.
g) School level interventions: A good proportion of the adolescent girls attend the schools. It
would be advantageous for us to tap these girls and involve in promotion of low cost
sanitary napkin as directly and telling the importance about the same in their family and
neighborhood as well. This can be done in session conduction and issue based
discussion with the girls students by making consensus.
h) Training and capacity building: Time by time orientation to the engaged team in the
production unit will be done by the experts and organizational management. This would
include the induction training to work and proper uses of the machines, quality
assurance while making sanitary napkins, hygiene maintaining during the whole
process, business doing tips and the like for making it successful.
Overall Goal: “Setting up a low cost sanitary napkin enterprise for proving affordable option
for menstrual hygiene management and piloting a business model for creating employability
to the girls & women in the working areas”.
Project Objectives:
1)
To establish low cost sanitary napkin production unit managed by rural women/ Self
Help Groups for ensuring adequate supply of sanitary napkins at affordable price.
2)
To improve the economic conditions of women & provide them the opportunities for
augmenting their income.
3)
To create awareness among rural girls & women on issues of Menstrual Hygiene
Management.
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4)
To provide quality infrastructure in the form of vending machines & incinerators to
promote Menstrual Hygiene Management in schools.
5)
To engage some rural unemployed youths in production and marketing and also to
fulfill the school requirements to maximum parts.
6)
To ensure the availability of products take place in a smooth manner.
7)
To develop an application so user friendly that it is easy for everyone to use and order
the products they need with convenient payment options.
Relevant fact:

The organizational presence and directly reach amid the adolescent girls and women
through various interventions in previous in the working blocks would be an added
advantage to gear up low cost sanitary napkins initiative.

There are nearly 1100 nos. of adolescent girls are mobilized into their groups called
AGGs.

Nearly 100 and above Peer Leaders mentored on menstrual hygiene management
(MHM) would volunteer in promotion of the low cost sanitary napkin at family and
community level.

Approx. 1200 nos. of women are also being mobilized into the women groups
invariably called CBOs. Their larger collectives are formed at block and district level.

Association with Govt. department through the membership of organization in different
Govt. committees e.g. District Health Society (DHS), Rogi Kalyan Samiti (RKS) would
be supportive to scale up the initiative in other blocks and locations.
Stakeholder Analysis

Adolescent girls (10-19 years age)

Women (20-45 years age)

Mothers

Govt. Health workers/Service providers (ASHAs, ANMs, AWWs)

School teachers (especially female teachers)
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS: cost of single napkin and the delivery prices
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Particulars
Cost ( in INR)
Remark
Vendor payment to each unit
30
Labour
20
Electricity
10
Packing
10
Transportation cost
25
For raw materials delivery to the unit
Wastage of materials &
maintenance charge
5
During transportation, storage and
uses.
Total manufacturing cost (for 15kms)
(calculated 5 labourers in a unit)
@3500/- per month to each on average
50100
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Cost calculation of Delivery and the product= Rs 50-100
= Rs 15.60/-15% profit on the cost = Rs. 15
Price of delivery cost 100/- + profit 115/- = 115)(In round figure Rs. 18/- per pack)
FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
INCOME STATEMENT AND NOTES
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BALANCE SHEET AND NOTES
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CASH FLOW STATEMENT
It is a sustainable revenue generating enterprise that gives stakeholders the opportunity to be
actively involved and engaged in manufacturing and distributing the product. By making a
nominal investment in the machine and employing around 5 to 6 women per machine say it ata
unit. SHGs can empower women in marginalized communities. This ensures that many selfhelp groups can tap into the resources of this eco-friendly sanitary napkin market, as well as
reduce high transportation costs by locally using this delivery service.
Furthermore, the proposed project does not compromise on the quality of the sanitary napkin
as the raw material used comes from pinewood fiber and not from cotton. The sanitary napkin
also has a biodegradable element which ensures minimal damage to the environment. And
delivery will be done in an environment friendly way
Expected outcome:

Awareness about menstrual hygiene management in rural population, thus providing an
atmosphere of confidence.

Better menstrual hygiene leads to decrease in prevalence of RTIs and hence, better health.
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
Training local women and hence, providing employment opportunities and augmenting
their income.

Incentive for workers for sale of sanitary napkins, thus encouragement leading to
motivational force.

Convergence of National flagship Program namely NRHM, SBM AND SGSY would
provide common ground for these program.
Risk and Assumptions
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Market competition and existence of big players to run the business for providing good quality
sanitary napkins on an affordable price and making minimum profit also.

Adaptation of low cost sanitary napkin by the target population e.g. girls and women
by shifting their mindset from the traditional practices of MHM in the rural areas.

Biodegradable materials used in the low cost sanitary napkin would attract once the
girls and women would come to know the harmful effect of branded sanitary napkins
on their health causes to serious diseases e.g. vaginal & uterus infection and other
criticality.

Women led business enterprise would raise the acceptability of the product made
among the girls and women in the local areas since trust upon them already does
exist.

Response from the govt. department and seeking possibility for the linkages might be
a good move to scale up the business enterprise led by the women on a longer run.
Contingency Plan:
So far information gathered in low cost sanitary napkin deliver initiative, we could not find any
serious threats to the business. However, in front of marketing and selling of the products
competition is there. Further, the whole idea behind this initiative is not a sole profit making
business rather to gear it up as social enterprise within marginalized and poor communities of
the working areas where women are taking its ownership and earning small income by
providing affordable option to the girls and women for their menstrual hygiene management.
Yet, in view of business promotion following are the contingency plan:
a) Starting of the low cost sanitary napkin promotion amid the adolescent girls groups (AGGs)
and women groups, SHGs to check the response quickly and incorporating value addition
as per response and feedback on absorbent quality, packing, pricing and so on.
b) Reaching to the possible no. of beneficiaries’ i.e. adolescent girls and women of desired
age groups directly through their groups, community forums to ensure minimum sale of the
ready products in a month and year.
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c) Seeking possibility to scale up the sale of sanitary napkins in other blocks of the district
by organizing promotional events at the village/community level in the form of Health Fair,
join collaboration with Govt. department and involving the services providers.
d) Training and exposure of the women engaged in the production unit(s) to update their
knowledge and enhancing skills to make sure that products are matching with the current
demand.
e) Tapping potential of the girls and women to develop them as entrepreneur by imparting
training and capacity building for their skill diversification as part of social enterprise of
the business. It would help in recognition of the business model piloted at a greater scale.
f) Mobilizing fund by the Self Help Groups to invest in the business apart from the profit of
the business in case of occurrence of sudden investment, new set-up establishment.
g) Maintaining appropriate working capital, corpus fund for providing support in social
security benefits, health insurance to the women workers engaged in the business to handle
the situation of sudden break down of the work.
h) Following right practices of the storage, procurements, packaging and other quality
assurance measures by overall supervision by the trained & skilled professional/unit
Manager cum Incharge.
Conclusion
Finally, winding up this project, we at WINGS4HER have a vision to connect
those in need and those who need; in simplified terms, fulfilling the all the
emergency needs of the women, girls whenever in emergency as quickly as
possible.
Budget:
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Annex. 1 Budget Gramya Sansthan (Excel Sheet)
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